Three years ago, Mr. Pilver and I were gearing up to be under the same roof permanently. Logistically, it made more sense for me to move from my home in Minnesota, to his in Washington State. Both our families live here, Mr. Pilver’s job was here and salaries aside it was more of a career than my job at Hell’s Kitchen. So I packed up my city life and drove half way across the country to dwell in a log house on many acres in the country.

I’m truly satisfied with the choice I made. It’s not always easy. Internet is terrible here, there are no radio stations I can tune in to at my home, and it’s a fifteen minute drive the the nearest tiny town with not much more than a gas station, tavern, and one of those grocery stores that carries the bare minimum of products so you don’t need to drive an additional half hour to buy milk.

I’m living my own version of the American dream. Mr. Pilver’s version varies slightly from mine. He wants to be a farmer. That’s fine with me, farming is a great thing. We farm produce like crazy. We raise chickens for meat and eggs. Recently we butchered a pig we raised and as much as you love that bacon you just had for breakfast, it is nothing compared to the freshly cured and smoked bacon I ate. Nothing. I truly wish I was not as bacon greedy as I now am, or I’d share with you.

So, as I was saying about Mr. Pilver, he wants to be a farmer. He loves the idea of hard work and not punching a time clock and not sitting through another meeting. I’ve always said, if he can find something that works, do it. Be a farmer. I’ll be a farmer with him. We aren’t naive enough to just quit our jobs and go for it. We do have two kids to take care of and a mortgage to pay.

Last night, I found Mr. Pilver scrolling through Craigslist, searching for sow pigs, trying to figure out a way to raise pigs and then I said it. Raising one pig was fine, but dozens? hundreds?

I DON’T WANT TO BE A PIG FARMER!

We had a serious discussion on the matter. I kept going back to my whiny response, “BUT I DON’T WANT TO BE A PIG FARMER!’ I never thought I’d HAVE to say that. I was having a heated exchange about whether or not we ought to try pig farming. What in the world was going on?

*Sigh* It’s probably not going to be the end of the topic. And for the record, I have nothing against pig farming or farmers. But after having one, and smelling him, I don’t want to multiply the odor by any amount. One is a perfectly acceptable amount of pig to have near your house. I do have to say, they are clean animals as the rumor suggests. They eat like pigs, but do not live like them. The giant hunk-a-ham made his bed every day, swear to god. After he ate out of the buckets of slop we fixed him, he moved them out of the way to the side of the pen. Pigs are truly smart and remarkable animals. But, I still don’t want to be a pig farmer.